Movies
If You Didn’t See ‘The Dark Tower,’ Here’s the Full Scene Referencing ‘IT’
“Storm blew me away… blew the whole circus away.”
While Stephen King novels like Gerald’s Game and IT received A+ adaptations this year, The Dark Tower wasn’t so fortunate. Not only was the lackluster film panned by critics, but it also under-performed at the box office. But hey, at least it had a lot of fun Stephen King Easter eggs!
Not long after young Jake arrives in Roland’s world, for example, he comes across the ruins of a theme park with the name PENNYWISE plastered on it. This is of course a direct link between The Dark Tower and IT, two stories that indeed do share some fun connections in the Stephen King Multiverse.
If you missed the film in theaters, you can check out the full scene below, wherein Roland refers to the theme park ruins as “ancient structures from before the world moved on.”
The Dark Tower hits 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD October 31.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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